One of my new AUTs has stakeholders who are obsessed with cosmetics. Despite having an AUT full of business processes gaps and showstopper bugs, during stakeholder meetings their first priority is to rattle off a list of all the cosmetic things they want changed. For example:

titles should left align

read-only fields should be borderless

certain fields should be bigger/smaller

less white space

no scroll bars

don’t like text color or font

buttons should be same width regardless of their names

Theoretically, Agile is supposed to address this kind of perpetual scope creep. But I hate it because even after listening to the stakeholders, it still becomes awkward for the dev to code and the tester to verify.

Something truly lacking in custom in-house (not shrink-wrap) apps is the ability for users to customize UIs until they’ve bored themselves to death. I’ve never been one to bother to “change skins” on my apps or even to change my desktop background. But cosmetics is a major concern for some users. Forcing me to test someone’s notion of what they think looks good on a UI is not interesting to me, as a tester. Let’s write software that lets users make their own cosmetic changes on their own time. I’ll test its engine. That sounds interesting.

Who am I?

My typical day: get up, maybe hit the gym, drop my kids off at daycare, listen to a podcast or public radio, do not drink coffee (I kicked it), test software or help others test it, break for lunch and a Euro-board game, try to improve the way we test, walk the dog and kids, enjoy a meal with Melissa, an IPA, and a movie/TV show, look forward to a weekend of hanging out with my daughter Josie, son Haakon, and perhaps a woodworking or woodturning project.